Recording: Jealous Guy, I Don’t Want To Be A Soldier by John Lennon

Ascot Sound Studios
Producers: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Phil Spector
Engineer: Phil McDonald, Eddie Klein

The fourth recording session for John Lennon’s second solo album Imagine took place on 24 May 1971.

The main album sessions were held at Ascot Sound Studios, Lennon’s recording studio at his Tittenhurst Park home.

Twenty-nine takes of ‘Jealous Guy’ were recorded, the last of which became the master. Lennon’s lead vocals were added on 29 May.

Prior to one of the takes, Lennon announced: “Here’s a message to all Northern Song shareholders. Here’s another half-million.”

Among the musicians present for the recording were Joey Molland and Tom Evans from Badfinger. The band received a telephone call from Lennon’s chauffeur asking if they’d be interested in taking part.

He said, ‘John Lennon’s doing his new album and he wants to know if a couple of you guys could come down and play a little guitar?’ We said, ‘Well, you know… okay, I guess.’ I mean who wants to go to John Lennon’s house? I mean ‘Who cares?’ It was a bit of a scene because, who was it going to be? Was it Pete and Tom? Or Tommy and Joey? Well I was definitely going. That was it, I was gone. I mean this guy’s the greatest writer we’ve had. It was quite difficult even getting dressed…

We cruised down to Lennon’s place in Surrey. He had a beautiful estate there and his house was very different. Instead of paintings and things he had hammers and screwdrivers hanging on the wall in frames, black carpets everywhere. There was a stepladder where you climbed up and looked through a magnifying glass on the ceiling. It said, ‘YES’. We spent about half an hour in a daze looking at all his stuff, the jukebox, the Sgt Pepper room, his magic stuff…

Finally, in walks John Lennon and he’s really bug-eyed, really gone – ‘Hello everybody!’ He was shouting. It was eleven o’clock at night and he’d just gotten out of bed. There was a bunch of people there: Nicky Hopkins, Klaus Voormann, Jim Keltner, Mike Pinder and he was really brusque with us, really almost rude, but not rude. I was just in awe, just ga-ga. Then he sits down on the stool and starts playing ‘Jealous Guy’ and I’m so flabbergasted I can’t play. He was singing and I’m literally astounded, ‘It sounds like John Lennon.’

So we recorded acoustic guitars on that and John said, ‘You can f**k off now if you’d like.’ Of course he wasn’t being like, ‘F**k off.’ It was like, ‘Do what you like.’ … One of the most exciting nights of me life.

The eight-track tape had Klaus Voormann’s bass guitar and Jim Keltner’s drums on tracks 1 and 2 respectively, and acoustic guitars by Badfinger’s Joey Molland and Tom Evans on track 3. Nicky Hopkins’ piano was on track 4, and harmonium by John Barham and vibraphone by Alan White were on track 5. Lennon’s lead vocals were recorded on track 8, and two more vocal overdubs were added on tracks 6 and 7.

Seven takes of ‘I Don’t Want To Be A Soldier’ were also recorded. The song had previously been worked on on 16 February.

The eight-track tape had Voormann’s bass and Keltner’s drums on tracks 1 and 2 respectively, and acoustic guitars by Molland and Evans on track 3. Barham’s piano was on 4, and Lennon’s electric guitar was on track 5. George Harrison’s slide guitar was recorded onto track 6, track 7 was an echo track, and Lennon’s vocals were on track 8.

Take 7 from this day became the album master. Overdubs of violin, viola, cello, and bass were added in New York City on 4 July.